How BI and Data Analytics Gurus Used Twitter in February

The Predictive Analytics World Conference in San Francisco is in full force and it’s time for a Twitter wrap up of all that happened in the past month.

The Predictive Analytics World Conference in San Francisco is in full force and it’s time for a Twitter wrap up of all that happened in the past month. If you want to follow the entire Twitter stream, just follow hashtag #pawcon.

First up, we have a few awards.

Best Twitter Handle – @AnalyticsQueen – Also known as Piyanka Jain and CEO/co-founder of Aryng, a San Francisco analytics training company, this queen of analytics gave a keynote address on March 6 on the five myths of predictive analytics. The former head of business analytics at PayPal made a great point last month in her Tweet “Data doesn’t speak, it responds.” See her explanation in this blog post.

Funniest Tweet Related to Analytics

Adam Crutchfield, a business analyst at Axcess Financial in Cincinnati, Ohio, showed us the importance of decision trees and hard questions – What to do when you drop a sandwich? All humor aside, this decision tree is the perfect showcase to explain why the questions are the most important part of data analytics.

A Survey!As usual, we found a researcher looking for data. David Stodder, TDWI’s director of research, is inviting PAWCon attendees to take the research survey ”Customer Analytics in the Age of Social Media.” All respondents will receive a free copy of the report.

Major Retailer Taking a Hit with Predictive Analytics

Not only did predictive analytics make the New York Times, but it made a family situation more than a little uncomfortable. Target, a major retailer, took a big hit with its “pregnancy prediction” score and mailed coupons to a teen who hadn’t told her father the news. It was all over the Twittersphere, and it was even reported by comedian Stephen Colbert. Gregory Piatetsky-Shapiro also gave us a little schooling in how this happened in this interview.

David Menninger, VP and research director of Ventana Research revealed another challenge of predictive analytics. He says in this Tweet that a new research report released today shows that “58% don’t understand the mathematics.” You can register for a webinar on the report set for March 22 for more on predictive analytics benchmarks.

Another big issue of late is President Obama’s focus on consumer privacy. We found an interesting roundup of privacy law and how it relates to predictive analytics via Law Practice News. This will be an important issue as predictive analytics grows. This topic was also addressed by former Amazon chief scientist Andreas Weigend in his keynote on March 4.

The Role of Predictive Analytics in Decision Management

And finally, we found another event worthy of checking out from James Taylor, president of Decision Management Systems. You can review the company’s just released report on the four “must have” capabilities of decision management systems. Spoiler alert – predictive analytics has a starring role. You can also view a recent webcast on Predictive Analytics with featured speaker Lou Bajuk-Yorgan (@LouBajuk), Senior Director of Product Management at Tibco Spotfire.